Tag Archives: Lance Armstrong

Lance Armstrong vs The World… USADA’s turn to bat

Personal stuff, , ,

Lance Armstrong in 2005, his 7th & final TdF win, leading Floyd Landis, Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso over the Aubisque. All but Lance have been sanctioned for doping. Is it realistic Lance could have competed clean? That’s the question of the day.
In the never-ending saga of Lance Armstrong and doping, a story in which truth is not just elusive but likely not recognizable due to the lack of credibility of various “witnesses”, we are seeing perhaps the final contestant up to bat against Lance Armstrong.

From the article in the Washington Post-

USADA’s letter, dated June 12, alleges that Armstrong and five former cycling team associates — three doctors including Italian physician Michele Ferrari, one trainer and team manager Johan Bruyneel— engaged in a massive doping conspiracy from 1998 to 2011, and that “the witnesses to the conduct described in this letter include more than ten (10) cyclists .?.?.”

And so it continues. Interesting timing (isn’t it always?), just prior to the “big event”… in this case, the Ironman in Nice in 11 days. Pretty darned close to the schedule that was kept prior to various TdF revelations.

Will anything come from this? Who knows. If there was strongly-damnable evidence, why didn’t it come out in the prior proceding? And if there was such evidence, why didn’t Lance chose to retire instead of continue with a “bring it on” attitude by going after the Ironman titles?

Really surprising is that USADA puts stock in the so-called (by Tyler Hamilton) “positive” Tour de Suiss EPO test from 2001, which did not show indications strong enough to be seen as a positive at that time; the tests then available were far more susceptible to a false positive than later tests, so the threshold for a sanctionable indication of doping was higher than shown by Lance’s sample. To say that the sample showed evidence of possible doping did not then and should not now merit a sanction. Testing today would tell the truth, but there are no samples from that event to test. Very weak evidence to bring to the party.

There may in fact be far better evidence of systematic doping that will come out. But as yet, they’ve claimed to have it, but have given no details. Could be a big surprise down the road. Or not. Ultimately, it will be George Hincapie’s testimony, if in fact he gave any, that will be the evidence that decides if this ship sinks or floats. George is the only player that nearly everyone believes will tell the truth.

In the meantime, USADA has not just thrown down the gauntlet, but also, because rules governing road and triathlon events forbid participation by an athlete under investigation, they have exacted a huge penalty well ahead of any judgement. Well played on USADA’s part. It will be interesting to see how Lance’s legal team reacts.

Regarding Lance, Tyler & that 60 minutes piece-

Personal stuff, , , , , , ,
Near the top of the Aubisque, July 19, 2005. Right to left Ivan Basso, Lance Armstrong, Jan Ullrich and Floyd Landis. At first thought Basso was Tyler, but thanks to John Murphy for correcting me. Doh! Oh well, what's swapping one doper for another these days? The only one in this group still in question is Lance.

(This is copied over from our “racing” blog) So Sunday we got to watch Tyler Hamilton in Act II of the supposedly-repentent cycling sinner’s club, telling us that he, like Floyd, now sees the light and wants to set the story straight, and part of that story is to tell the world that Lance Armstrong cheated his way to his Tour de France victories.

This would all be so much more believable if Tyler and Floyd weren’t circling the drain, after years of professing their innocence despite failing doping controls (in Tyler’s case, twice, although he did admit to the latter event). This would all be so much more believable if there wasn’t lots of $$$ involved… the huge number of $$$ each of these former athletes lost when they were caught and spiraled downward, the huge number of $$$ to potentially gain from book contracts and media access fees.

In the Tyler Hamilton 60 minutes interview, you couldn’t escape a feeling that he was making some of it up as he went along, with long pauses and lots of blinking. To be fair, he was that way with easy questions too, but it causes me to wonder if the guy cannot distinguish between the fantasy world he lived in for years and the real world.

If there’s a real bombshell that’s going to harm Lance’s legacy, it’s the Tour de Suisse angle, the supposedly-failed EPO test that was covered up by the UCI. That would be huge, if there’s credible evidence it happened. But there were issues with that as well, as we were shown evidence of a “suspicious” test result, not failed. And the money trail, the $125,000 donation to encourage the UCI to cover things up? You’ve got to be kidding; that might be a down payment but certainly doesn’t come close to what it would (or should?) take to buy off something like that.

And finally, there was the “white lunchbag” story. Tyler telling us how he lost his virginity to EPO via one of those “white lunchbags” the team doctors and trainers assigned to their best athletes, with EPO and/or HGH inside. This was a big thing for Tyler, a recognition that he’d arrived. And then later in the broadcast he talks about “reaching out” to Lance for… EPO. In a way that made it sound like Lance really helped him out; as if if hadn’t already gotten onto the EPO train previously. But he had. The “white lunchbag”, remember?

Personally, I don’t think it’s possible to compete at the highest levels in cycling, against people who are doping, without assistance. That’s the polite way of saying it. Assistance. We all need help from time to time, right? So we’ll make doping no more evil than someone down on their luck taking food stamps or a tax credit. But at some level it’s not. What is that level? Back in the day, we had a clear distinction between the supposed purity of college sports vs the evil commercialism of the professional world. I think I bought into that; I never assumed that all was clean & nice on the professional side, and maybe that’s why doping in cycling hasn’t bothered me as much as it should. But that’s not an argument with legs to stand on, because with the professionals in football, baseball, soccer, cycling etc leading the way, the amateurs have been encouraged to step up their game. Doping is clearly rampant in amateur sports, even at the high school level.

If there had been a distinction between professional and amateur sports and any sort of purity or honest competition, I think it was lost when the Olympics allowed professionals to compete. That, for me, was probably the “Dave Stoller” moment. “Everybody cheats. I just didn’t know.” –Mike–